Canadian Pro-Lifers Continue to Pray for Abortion Activist Henry Morgentaler

The concentration-camp survivor who promoted unrestricted access to abortion in Canada died May 28.

CNA/EWTN NEWS

OTTAWA, Canada — Pro-life leaders in Canada reacted with sadness and prayers to the death of Henry Morgentaler, regretting his leading role in legalizing abortion across the nation and the tens of thousands of abortions he performed.

“As an organization supporting the protection of all human life from conception to natural death, we have always been opposed to Canada’s unrestricted access to legal abortion of which Henry Morgentaler, through his continued court challenges, was probably the biggest single influence,” the Toronto-based Catholic Civil Rights League said May 30.

“Nevertheless, his death reminds us of the sanctity of all life, and we continue to pray for him, as well as for his family and friends, at this difficult time,” the league added.

Jim Hughes, national president of the Campaign Life Coalition, said he had been praying for Morgentaler every day “for more than 20 years.”

However, he said Morgentaler was “a highly divisive figure” who trained abortionists “in his methods of killing.”

Hughes said the abortionist did “unbelievable damage” to Canada’s future, and his advocacy resulted in the abortions of “millions of Canadians.”

The Polish-born Morgentaler died May 28 in Toronto at the age of 90. He had survived Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Dachau before emigrating to Canada from Poland, The New York Times reports.

He performed his first illegal abortion in 1968 on the 18-year-old daughter of a friend.

Beginning in the late 1960s, he opened illegal abortion businesses because he believed criminalized abortion drove women to incompetent abortionists.

“The law was barbarous, cruel and unjust. I had been in a concentration camp, and I knew what suffering was. If I can ease suffering, I feel perfectly justified in doing so,” he said, according to a 1996 biography by Catherine Dunphy.

During his career, he performed tens of thousands of abortions. He was arrested for performing illegal abortions four times and acquitted by jurors four times. Prosecutors appealed one acquittal, resulting in Morgentaler’s conviction.

He served 10 months of an 18-month jail sentence, being released after a heart attack. His appeal of another abortion conviction in Ontario resulted in a hearing before Canada’s Supreme Court that challenged the constitutionality of Canadian abortion law. In a 5-2 ruling, the court struck down the law on Jan. 28, 1988, on the grounds it denied women their rights in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Morgentaler's death this week prompted prayers from pro-life leaders.

“As we wish for both ally and adversary, may God have mercy on his soul,” said Mary Ellen Douglas, national director of the Campaign Life Coalition.

“This is the end of an era, and we hope that our country can now turn a necessary corner and find the courage to restore protection to all human beings, born and preborn.”

Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton, president of Canada’s bishops’ conference, said he recognized that Morgentaler’s family had lost someone they loved. He expressed his condolences on behalf of Canada’s Catholic bishops.

“Every human life is sacred and deserves our care and protection,” Archbishop Smith said. “As Catholics, we mourn the loss of each life, in particular of those who die in the womb, and pray to God to be merciful to all who die. May Our Lord help us all to find the best ways to aid those who are suffering and in need.”

Morgentaler had a very traumatic home life even before he was sent to Auschwitz.

It seems like he saw every child he aborted as preventing the next Hitler. Morgentaler was a very wounded man who lived in a very dark and hopeless world.

The movement to legalize abortion in Canada, like the United States, is a movement of the elite, which is why Morgantaler received (and still does receive) such positive press, despite losing every debate and showing obvious signs of being a very troubled individual.

Posted by Charles O'Connell on Monday, Jun, 3, 2013 10:41 PM (EDT):

Edward Hara: Despite the extreme example of Dr. Morgentaler, you can find the answer to the deep mystery, why pray for the dead, here:

I have heard from the Divine Mercy movement, that when we are dying, our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ will ask us in the last moments of life whether or not we will accept His mercy, giving it three tries. If by the third try, the worst sinner—Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger, Mao Tse Tung, Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hiter—accepts Jesus’ Mercy, that person will be saved.

I will be asking for mercy for my many sins for the rest of my life.

Posted by John on Monday, Jun, 3, 2013 7:09 PM (EDT):

He did a favor for a friend, and that is how he started his life’s work. The concentration camp taaught him what real suffering was, and I agree that he was doing kindness to women by giving them what they needed at that point in their lifetimes. Only (so-called) pro-lifers make these women , like Roe, feel guilty and that they to ask God for mercy in order to receive forgiveness, which Our Lord has already given them and that His embrace is theirs for the asking without hesitation. Why do certain organizations feel that Our Lord will give them forgiveness only when the organization’s criteria has been met;it is not their place to dictate how and when mercy is to be obtained. These women just need to know that He has already forgiven them , regardless of why or how many times? Perhaps the (so-called) pro-lifers stopped being militant, and be unabashly pro-mercy for these mercy and offer a shoulder to cry and be told that everthing will be alright, and not abuse the opportunity to tell them they murdered their child and they have to join some anti-choice militant group in order to be on good term, and lie to women in order to keep other women from obtaining an abortiion to lie to them and grab them from goining into a clinic if they want to leave a fake clinic (a.k.a. crisis pregnancy centers) and obtain an abortion. This man and Canada’s Supreme Court did right with women in Canada, what will you do in memory of him?

Posted by Jacqueline on Monday, Jun, 3, 2013 12:56 PM (EDT):

The abortionists of Canada, the United States, or the world, would not have such power were it not granted them through the judicial judgements of our Supreme Court justices.
Through our prayers, may our Lord also extend his mercy to judges and politicians who have no mercy for a child in the womb ~ to all who reject God’s gifts, a potential judge, senator, president, or priest.

Posted by Edward Hara on Monday, Jun, 3, 2013 11:46 AM (EDT):

Perhaps someone here can help me understand something about this. When a man dies, his soul is in the state in which it will exist forever. Those who have loved our Lord Jesus Christ and sought to do His will, striving for sanctity and holiness, will find that the presence of God is a warm and inviting fire of love.

But men like Morgentaler, who have spent a lifetime despising God, hating his Church, and participating in the gravest of sins also go into eternity in that fashion. Sacred Scripture shows us that we set our hearts on sin and we become what we shall be forever. This life is the only chance we get to repent, turn, and become Christlike.

What, then, is the purpose of praying for someone like Morgentaler. He is what he chose to be, he is where he is, and no amount of my prayers or yours is going to change him ontologically from a God-hater to a God-lover.

I think instead of praying for his soul, the Church should warn folks that he is most like in hell, screaming to no avail in torments, and promote this as a warning to others who think that sin is a light matter.

Now, I may be wrong, so correct me if you think so.

Posted by Joseph Valenti on Monday, Jun, 3, 2013 11:41 AM (EDT):

As an American, I’m proud of the response of my Catholic brothers and sisters to the death of the “father of Canadian abortion legality.” It demonstrates perfectly the distinction between the sin and the sinner. We abhor the sin - and ask Almighty God to determine the fate of the sinner, asking for mercy upon the soul of Morgenthaler, knowing that we, too, must some day face the Author of Mercy - and Justice.

Posted by paul wood on Monday, Jun, 3, 2013 11:26 AM (EDT):

What an incredible nightmare he caused us Canadian! He played on being a holocaust survivor, with a very strange twist of logic. He worked from Montreal, the only province which had all and all abandoned faith amd spiritual things. He played on the ripe feminist movement, even stronger in Quebec,constantly saying “services for women”. He lost every scientific debate, but the media was on his side. THousands upon thousands of Canadians, just for the record, did protest in huge numbers… I was one of them. Police arrested priests and mothers in droves! Many people dont’ know this history in the 70;‘s and 80;s,, we did try to stop abortion! We are still not so ‘left’, it was imposed on us as a matter of ‘choice’..bishops, clergy and so called religious sisters were notoriously and ubiquitously silent. Canada is now underpopulated, with little family life, fully blown gay life with an astronomical hiv rate (read: 1 in 120 persons, source:Dr.KEvin Gough,M.D.,, google him).. DR. MOrgentaler hopefully rests in peace, but he and his cohorts have done unimaginable damage,, our prayers, and spiritual ‘dizziness’ are left with us as is a beautiful country bereft of a happy normal sense of family, life and love,, the effects are everywhere: depression, substance abuse is epidemic. Morgenthaler has been haled a ‘hero’ by media types and received the ORder of Canada award.!woooo! How do you figure!,, just for the record. p.w, toronto

Posted by Ed Mays on Monday, Jun, 3, 2013 11:18 AM (EDT):

I hate to say it but good riddance. Maybe he`ll find out after death what God may have in store for him.

Since Jesus Christ would have been born, would have lived and died even if Dr. Morgentaler were the only person in need of redemption, we should all be praying for our fallen brethren.

When the worst go good, they become the best. Witness Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

It was extremely disturbing for me to witness the reaction, on television, of an extremely major pro-life leader, to the assassination of Dr. George Tiller.

While giving token disapproval of the act, the pro-life leader in question dug in his heels, in the spirit of opposition outside the Tiller facility.

Ignoring Matthew 5:39: “But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil.”

Instead of praying on t.v. watched by millions for the soul of Dr. Tiller, for whom alone Jesus Christ would have been born, would have lived and died.

When the leftist gangsta government finally gears itself up to shut down pro-life in the U.S., the Tiller assassination will likely serve as the contemporary equivalent to the Reichstag Fire as a pretext for the suppression of religious opposition to civil tyranny.

“The Catholic Church Through The Ages: A History” By Fr. John Vidmar. Page 326. The Reichstag Fire was used as the pretext to shut down the Catholic Press in Third Reich Germany.

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